Apprehension
Surveillance and System Avoidance: Criminal Justice Contact and Institutional Attachment
Sarah Brayne
American Sociological Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
The degree and scope of criminal justice surveillance increased dramatically in the United States over the past four decades. Recent qualitative research suggests the rise in surveillance may be met with a concomitant increase in efforts to evade it. To date, however, there has been no quantitative empirical test of this theory. In this article, I introduce the concept of “system avoidance,” whereby individuals who have had contact with the criminal justice system avoid surveilling institutions that keep formal records. Using data from Add Health (n = 15,170) and the NLSY97 (n = 8,894), I find that individuals who have been stopped by police, arrested, convicted, or incarcerated are less likely to interact with surveilling institutions, including medical, financial, labor market, and educational institutions, than their counterparts who have not had criminal justice contact. By contrast, individuals with criminal justice contact are no less likely to participate in civic or religious institutions. Because criminal justice contact is disproportionately distributed, this study suggests system avoidance is a potential mechanism through which the criminal justice system contributes to social stratification: it severs an already marginalized subpopulation from institutions that are pivotal to desistance from crime and their own integration into broader society.
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Less Cash, Less Crime: Evidence from the Electronic Benefit Transfer Program
Richard Wright et al.
NBER Working Paper, March 2014
Abstract:
It has been long recognized that cash plays a critical role in fueling street crime due to its liquidity and transactional anonymity. In poor neighborhoods where street offenses are concentrated, a significant source of circulating cash stems from public assistance or welfare payments. In the 1990s, the Federal government mandated individual states to convert the delivery of their welfare benefits from paper checks to an Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) system, whereby recipients received and expended their funds through debit cards. In this paper, we examine whether the reduction in the circulation of cash on the streets associated with EBT implementation had an effect on crime. To address this question, we exploit the variation in the timing of the EBT implementation across Missouri counties. Our results indicate that the EBT program had a negative and significant effect on the overall crime rate as well as burglary, assault, and larceny. According to our point estimates, the overall crime rate decreased by 9.8 percent in response to the EBT program. We also find a negative effect on arrests, especially those associated with non-drug offenses. EBT implementation had no effect on rape, a crime that is unlikely to be motivated by the acquisition of cash. Interestingly, the significant drop in crime in the United States over several decades has coincided with a period of steady decline in the proportion of financial transactions involving cash. In that sense, our findings serve as a fresh contribution to the important debate surrounding the factors underpinning the great American crime decline.
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Reevaluating Foreclosure Effects on Crime During the “Great Recession”
Kevin Wolff, Joshua Cochran & Eric Baumer
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, February 2014, Pages 41-69
Abstract:
High rates of foreclosures during the “Great Recession” raised concerns about the potential harmful effects of the housing crisis not just on the economy, but also on levels of crime. Grounded primarily in theories of social disorganization and incivility, a growing body of empirical research has been directed at exploring whether the foreclosure crisis stimulated higher crime rates in America than would otherwise have been experienced. Many studies have now reported a significant association between rates of foreclosure and crime during the recession, but we are skeptical of whether this represents a causal effect because it is unclear whether the traditional regression approaches applied in most of the extent research account sufficiently for preexisting differences present in areas that experienced varying levels of foreclosure. We advance the literature on foreclosure and crime by employing a propensity score matching (PSM) technique to better account for such differences, evaluating whether U.S. counties that received larger “doses” of foreclosure during the recent recession experienced higher levels of property crime than comparable counties in which rates of foreclosure remained relatively low. Our analysis shows that, once prerecession differences between counties with high versus medium-to-low foreclosure rates are removed, there is no evidence of a significant association between rates of foreclosure and crime.
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Bring a gun to a gunfight: Armed Adversaries and Violence across Nations
Richard Felson, Mark Berg & Meghan Rogers
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
We use homicide data and the International Crime Victimization Survey to examine the role of firearms in explaining cross-national variation in violence. We suggest that while gun violence begets gun violence, it inhibits the tendency to engage in violence without guns. We attribute the patterns to adversary effects — i.e., the tendency of offenders to take into account the threat posed by their adversaries. Multi-level analyses of victimization data support the hypothesis that living in countries with high rates of gun violence lowers an individual’s risk of an unarmed assault and assaults with less lethal weapons. Analyses of aggregate data show that homicide rates and gun violence rates load on a separate underlying factor than other types of violence. The results suggest that a country’s homicide rate reflects, to a large extent, the tendency of its offenders to use firearms.
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Effects of the Repeal of Missouri’s Handgun Purchaser Licensing Law on Homicides
Daniel Webster, Cassandra Kercher Crifasi & Jon Vernick
Journal of Urban Health, April 2014, Pages 293-302
Abstract:
In the USA, homicide is a leading cause of death for young males and a major cause of racial disparities in life expectancy for men. There are intense debate and little rigorous research on the effects of firearm sales regulation on homicides. This study estimates the impact of Missouri’s 2007 repeal of its permit-to-purchase (PTP) handgun law on states’ homicide rates and controls for changes in poverty, unemployment, crime, incarceration, policing levels, and other policies that could potentially affect homicides. Using death certificate data available through 2010, the repeal of Missouri’s PTP law was associated with an increase in annual firearm homicides rates of 1.09 per 100,000 (+23 %) but was unrelated to changes in non-firearm homicide rates. Using Uniform Crime Reporting data from police through 2012, the law’s repeal was associated with increased annual murders rates of 0.93 per 100,000 (+16 %). These estimated effects translate to increases of between 55 and 63 homicides per year in Missouri.
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The Transformation of Prison Regimes in Late Capitalist Societies
John Sutton
American Journal of Sociology, November 2013, Pages 715-746
Abstract:
Recent studies argue that cultural and political-economic shifts have led to a sea change in penal regimes among modern Western societies, resulting in more punitive social policies in general and a trend toward higher incarceration rates in particular. This is a special case of a wider argument that globalization has led to a decline in state autonomy and convergence on a market-based model of economic and social policy. This thesis has been challenged by the empirical literature on welfare states, which finds persistent cross-national diversity in institutional structures, policies, and patterns of inequality. Focusing on incarceration rates as the outcome of interest, this study evaluates these arguments by applying a Bayesian change-point model to four decades of data from 15 countries. Results show that a regime shift did occur but that incarceration rates increased mainly among countries with unregulated labor markets, decentralized polities, or weak labor unions. Profound institutional differences persist and are fateful for incarceration trajectories.
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Coercion, Control, and Cooperation in a Prostitution Ring
Carlo Morselli & Isa Savoie-Gargiso
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, May 2014, Pages 247-265
Abstract:
Coercion and control are key components of the dominant narrative on sex trafficking, but the power and exchange relations between some of the key players in trafficking have not been carefully examined. This study is based on electronic surveillance data from a two-year police investigation of a prostitution network in Montreal. All of the prostitutes in the network had initially been recruited when they were minors. Whereas most of the writing on sex trafficking portrays pimps as being involved in highly exploitative and coercive relationships with prostitutes, we found that control was not always the sole purview of the pimps, that prostitutes often held key positions and privileged roles within the network, and that pimps’ and prostitutes’ relationships involved complex exchanges of network resources.
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Jillian Peterson et al.
Law and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although offenders with mental illness are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, psychiatric symptoms relate weakly to criminal behavior at the group level. In this study of 143 offenders with mental illness, we use data from intensive interviews and record reviews to examine how often and how consistently symptoms lead directly to criminal behavior. First, crimes rarely were directly motivated by symptoms, particularly when the definition of symptoms excluded externalizing features that are not unique to Axis I illness. Specifically, of the 429 crimes coded, 4% related directly to psychosis, 3% related directly to depression, and 10% related directly to bipolar disorder (including impulsivity). Second, within offenders, crimes varied in the degree to which they were directly motivated by symptoms. These findings suggest that programs will be most effective in reducing recidivism if they expand beyond psychiatric symptoms to address strong variable risk factors for crime like antisocial traits.
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Does Self-Defense Training Prevent Sexual Violence Against Women?
Jocelyn Hollander
Violence Against Women, March 2014, Pages 252-269
Abstract:
Self-defense classes are offered across the nation as a strategy for reducing women’s vulnerability to sexual assault. Yet there has been little systematic research assessing the effectiveness of these classes. In this article, I use data from a mixed methods study of a 10-week, university-based, feminist self-defense class to examine the effectiveness of self-defense training over a 1-year follow-up period. My analyses indicate that women who participate in self-defense training are less likely to experience sexual assault and are more confident in their ability to effectively resist assault than similar women who have not taken such a class.
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Resisting Rape: The Effects of Victim Self-Protection on Rape Completion and Injury
Jongyeon Tark & Gary Kleck
Violence Against Women, March 2014, Pages 270-292
Abstract:
The impact of victim resistance on rape completion and injury was examined utilizing a large probability sample of sexual assault incidents, derived from the National Crime Victimization Survey (1992-2002), and taking into account whether harm to the victim followed or preceded self-protection (SP) actions. Additional injuries besides rape, particularly serious injuries, following victim resistance are rare. Results indicate that most SP actions, both forceful and nonforceful, reduce the risk of rape completion, and do not significantly affect the risk of additional injury.
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Janet Lauritsen, Maribeth Rezey & Karen Heimer
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, February 2014, Pages 7-28
Abstract:
To more fully understand how economic conditions and the latest economic downturn might be associated with rates of violence, this research examines a variety of economic indicators and their relationships to subgroup rates of violence overall and by victim–offender relationship. We find that the recent recession of 2007 to 2009 has not produced significant increases in victimization for any of the groups or violence types analyzed here. We also find that several economic indicators are associated with violence during the 1973 to 2000 period, yet these same factors fail to be significantly correlated with the trends from 2001 to 2011. This suggests that historical conditions unique to the more recent period are moderating the relationships between trends in the macroeconomy and violence, and that future research should focus on developing and modeling indicators of various potential moderating influences. We also caution, however, that this recent change in the association between the economy and the violence is based on the data from a relatively few number of years and may not continue into the future.
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Alex Piquero
Justice Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
A very small number of studies has observed that persons who perceive an early age-at-death report a higher risk of offending. This literature, however, is limited by the use of general population samples, cross-sectional data, and the failure to consider both the determinants of perceived age-at-death, as well as some of the mediating processes associated with the relationship between perceived age-at-death and offending. Using data for a large sample of serious youthful offenders from two urban cities and who were followed for seven years, the current study attends to these concerns. Results show that gender, race/ethnicity, and adverse neighborhood conditions influence the perceived age-at-death; this perception distinguishes between distinct trajectories of offending, and such perceptions also influence both perceived risks and perceived rewards as well as one’s impulse control.
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Forfeiture of Illegal Gains, Attempts, and Implied Risk Preferences
Murat Mungan & Jonathan Klick
Journal of Legal Studies, January 2014, Pages 137-153
Abstract:
In the law enforcement literature there is a presumption — supported by some experimental and econometric evidence — that criminals are more responsive to increases in the certainty than the severity of punishment. Under a general set of assumptions, this implies that criminals are risk seeking. We show that this implication is no longer valid when forfeiture of illegal gains and the possibility of unsuccessful attempts are considered. Therefore, when drawing inferences concerning offenders’ attitudes toward risk based on their responses to various punishment schemes, special attention must be paid to whether and to what extent offenders’ illegal gains can be forfeited and whether increases in the probability of punishment affect the probability of attempts being successful. We discuss policy implications related to our observations.
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The law & economics of private prosecutions in industrial revolution England
Mark Koyama
Public Choice, April 2014, Pages 277-298
Abstract:
Can the market provide law enforcement? This paper addresses this question by analyzing an historical case study: the system of private prosecutions that prevailed in England prior to the introduction of the police. I examine why this system came under strain during the Industrial Revolution, and how private clubs emerged to internalize the externalities that caused the private system to generate too little deterrence. The historical evidence suggests that these private order institutions were partially successful in ameliorating the problem of crime in a period when public choice considerations precluded the introduction of a professional police force.
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Sarah Manchak et al.
Law and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many probation agencies in the United States assign offenders with mental illness to relatively small specialty caseloads supervised by officers with relevant training, rather than to large general caseloads. Specialty caseloads are designed to improve the process and outcomes of probation, largely by linking these probationers with psychiatric treatment and avoiding unnecessary violations. In this multimethod, longitudinal matched trial, we tested whether a prototypical specialty agency (n = 183) differed from a traditional agency (n = 176) in officers’ practices, probationers’ treatment access, and probationers’ rule violations. The specialty agency yielded significantly (a) better officer practices (e.g., problem solving rather than sanction threats; higher quality relationships with probationers; more boundary spanning), (b) greater rates of treatment involvement, and (c) lower rates of violation reports than the traditional agency. Additionally, officers’ use of sanctions and threats increased probationers’ risk of incurring a probation violation, whereas high-quality officer−probationer relationships protected against this outcome. When implemented with fidelity, specialty mental health caseloads improved the supervision process for this high-need group.
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The impact of skills in probation work: A reconviction study
Peter Raynor, Pamela Ugwudike & Maurice Vanstone
Criminology and Criminal Justice, April 2014, Pages 235-249
Abstract:
This article reports on the results of a quasi-experimental study of practitioners’ skills in probation work. Videotaped interviews were produced by a group of probation officers and analysed by researchers using a checklist designed to identify the range of skills used in one-to-one supervision. Reconviction rates were found to be significantly lower among those whose supervisors were assessed as using a wider range of skills. The article also reviews the recent history of research on practitioners’ skills in probation, and considers the implications of positive findings from this and other studies.
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Long-Term Consequences of Adolescent Gang Membership for Adult Functioning
Amanda Gilman, Karl Hill & David Hawkins
American Journal of Public Health, May 2014, Pages 938-945
Objectives: We examined the possible public health consequences of adolescent gang membership for adult functioning.
Methods: Data were drawn from the Seattle Social Development Project, a longitudinal study focusing on the development of positive and problem outcomes. Using propensity score matching and logistic regression analyses, we assessed the effects of adolescent gang membership on illegal behavior, educational and occupational attainment, and physical and mental health at the ages of 27, 30, and 33 years.
Results: In comparison with their nongang peers, who had been matched on 23 confounding risk variables known to be related to selection into gang membership, those who had joined a gang in adolescence had poorer outcomes in multiple areas of adult functioning, including higher rates of self-reported crime, receipt of illegal income, incarceration, drug abuse or dependence, poor general health, and welfare receipt and lower rates of high school graduation.
Conclusions: The finding that adolescent gang membership has significant consequences in adulthood beyond criminal behavior indicates the public health importance of the development of effective gang prevention programs.
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The Relationship between Incarceration and Premature Adult Mortality: Gender Specific Evidence
Michael Massoglia et al.
Social Science Research, July 2014, Pages 142–154
Abstract:
We examine the relationship between incarceration and premature mortality for men and women. Analyses using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) reveal strong gender differences. Using two different analytic procedures the results show that women with a history of incarceration are more likely to die than women without such a history, even after controlling for health status and criminal behavior prior to incarceration, the availability of health insurance, and other socio-demographic factors. In contrast, there is no relationship between incarceration and mortality for men after accounting for these factors. The results point to the importance of examining gender differences in the collateral consequences of incarceration. The results also contribute to a rapidly emerging literature linking incarceration to various health hazards. Although men constitute the bulk of inmates, future research should not neglect the special circumstances of female former inmates and their rapidly growing numbers.
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Neighborhood Disinvestment, Abandonment, and Crime Dynamics
Erica Raleigh & George Galster
Journal of Urban Affairs, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article develops a conceptual framework of neighborhood crime dynamics based on a synthesis of criminology and neighborhood change literatures which suggests that neighborhood decline can produce a nonlinear response in crime rates. The authors probe this relationship using a rich Detroit data set containing detailed, block-level information about housing, land, abandonment, population, schools, liquor outlets, and crime reports of various categories. Negative binomial models reveal that several neighborhood attributes are consistently associated with all types of crime (renter occupancy, population density, establishments with liquor licenses) while other attributes are only associated with particular types of crime. A simulation using estimated parameters suggests that processes of disinvestment and abandonment can generate a nonlinear pattern in the rate of growth in neighborhood crimes that vary in intensity by crime type. The authors explore the implications of their findings for anticrime strategies focusing on demolishing abandoned housing, “right-sizing” urban footprints, and regulating liquor-selling establishments.
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Elizabeth Groff & Brian Lockwood
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, May 2014, Pages 277-314
Objectives: Test whether the exposure of street segments to five different potentially criminogenic facilities is positively related to violent, property, or disorder crime counts controlling for sociodemographic context. The geographic extent of the relationship is also explored.
Method: Facility exposure is operationalized as total inverse distance from each street segment in Philadelphia, PA, to surrounding facilities within three threshold distances of 400, 800, and 1,200 feet. All distances are measured using shortest path street distance. Census block group data representing ethnic heterogeneity, concentrated disadvantage, and stability are proportionally allocated to each street block. Negative binomial regression is used to model the relationships.
Results: Exposure to bars and subway stations was positively associated with violent, property, and disorder crime at all distance thresholds from street segments. Schools were associated with disorder offenses at all distance thresholds. The effects of exposure to halfway houses and drug treatment centers varied by distance and by crime type.
Conclusions: Facilities have a significant effect on crime at nearby places even controlling for sociodemographic variables. The geographic extent of a facility’s criminogenic influence varies by type of facility and type of crime. Future research should examine additional types of facilities and include information about place management.